Senior Software Engineer, Global Markets (Backend)

Airbnb was born in 2007 when two hosts welcomed three guests to their San Francisco home, and has since grown to over 5 million hosts who have welcomed over 2 billion guest arrivals in almost every country across the globe. Every day, hosts offer unique stays and experiences that make it possible for guests to connect with communities in a more authentic way.

NOTE: NO VISA SUPPORT

The Community You Will Join

The Global Markets Tech team drives the evolution of our guest and host experience across international markets through product innovation that accelerates international growth. Expanding in under-penetrated markets is a core pillar of our company strategy. To achieve this, we innovate at every level - adapting our product to the unique needs of every corner of the globe so that every user across our 220+ countries and regions feels right at home.

The team partners closely with Product, Design, Data Science, regional stakeholders, and core platform/vertical teams to translate local market needs into durable, scalable technology that can be piloted quickly and then rolled out broadly.

The Difference You Will Make

A Senior Software Engineer in Global Markets is expected to deliver measurable international growth impact by building scalable product capabilities across key funnel surfaces (landing → search → pre‑booking) and by improving pricing, promotions, and discounts to increase conversion and customer value across markets.

A Typical Day

• Partner with PM/Design/Data Science to clarify goals, requirements, constraints, and success metrics, and translate them into a sequenced technical plan.
• Write or review technical designs, align tradeoffs, and coordinate dependencies with partner teams across regions.
• Build production code and services with a high quality bar: testing, documentation, instrumentation, and performance/reliability considerations.
• Run design and code reviews, advise engineers, and help drive consistent engineering standards across the team.
• Own delivery: track execution risks, provide stakeholder updates, coordinate launches (including localization/market rollout), and monitor post-launch results to iterate quickly.

Your Expertise

• Fluency in English is required. Japanese or Korean working proficiency is a plus .
• 6+ years of hands-on software engineering experience, with a strong track record shipping production systems.
• Solid understanding of large-scale backend architecture and distributed systems patterns (e.g., well-designed APIs, scalable data models, high-throughput services/pipelines, and performance-aware algorithms).
• Proven ability to drive ambiguous problems to resolution: break down open-ended requirements, propose pragmatic solutions, and execute independently while keeping stakeholders aligned.
• Strong programming skills in one or more of the following: Java, Kotlin, Python, Ruby/Ruby on Rails, JavaScript/TypeScript, with experience building and operating backend services.
• High engineering quality bar: you write clean, testable, maintainable code, and you design with reliability, observability, and operational readiness in mind.
• You actively raise the team’s technical bar through thoughtful code reviews, architecture discussions, and sharing best practices that improve overall team productivity.
• Data-informed decision making: you use metrics and experimentation to validate impact, diagnose issues, and iterate toward better outcomes—recognizing that small improvements in these flows can drive meaningful business results.
• Strong collaboration and communication skills: you work effectively across engineering teams and with Product, Design, and Data partners in a global environment.